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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29388693">Wait for me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grace_Sky/pseuds/Grace_Sky'>Grace_Sky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kakumeiki Valvrave | Valvrave the Liberator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Haruto has nightmares, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Nightmares, They both suffer a lot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:07:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,394</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29388693</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grace_Sky/pseuds/Grace_Sky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Now, L-Elf, with his back on the hard floor and his eyes closed, felt nothing but a dark abyss of despair and emptiness. His soul was dead. He had no longer a reason to live. He lacked the motivation to move, to eat, to sleep. He wasn't existing anymore.<br/>For what he cared, the universe could rot and explode, and him with it. He had lost everything.<br/>In that moment, he heard the familiar hiss of the door. He didn't even need to open his eyes to know who was his unwelcome visitor, because this person, since the death of Lieselotte, disturbed his isolation at any given moment, though L-Elf had always dismissed him with a cold voice.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>L-elf &amp; Tokishima Haruto, L-elf/Tokishima Haruto, Lieselotte W. Dorssia &amp; L-elf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wait for me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The room was pitch black, bathed in cold and suffocating shadows, and the walls were covered with obsessing writings, plans and hypotheses, all of them a failure, the proof that Lieselotte could have not been saved in any way.</p><p>L-Elf had tried for hours, days, to find a solution, to understand what went wrong, why he had failed, but he had come up with nothing. Only pain, bitterness, guilt and regret. Because he hadn't been able to save the woman he was in love with, his light, the reason he was still alive.</p><p>Now, L-Elf, with his back on the hard floor and his eyes closed, felt nothing but a dark abyss of despair and emptiness. His soul was dead. He had no longer a reason to live. He lacked the motivation to move, to eat, to sleep. He wasn't existing anymore. For what he cared, the universe could rot and explode, and him with it. He had lost everything.</p><p>In that moment, he heard the familiar hiss of the door. He didn't even need to open his eyes to know who was his unwelcome visitor, because this person, since the death of Lieselotte, disturbed his isolation at any given moment, though L-Elf had always dismissed him with a cold voice.</p><p>“L-Elf…”</p><p>Here he was. Tokishima Haruto. The stubborn and naive boy who never knew when it was time to let go of lost causes.</p><p>L-Elf already knew what he was going to say; <em>How do you feel?</em>/<em>We need your help, please!</em>/<em>L-Elf, I'll return again</em>. It was like a mantra, the promise of a fool.</p><p>Suddenly, L-Elf heard the door close, and he narrowed slightly his eyebrows. That was it? Tokishima Haruto had only come to say his name and then leave? He didn't care –actually, it was better that the boy already left– but he couldn't help but wondering what was the point of–</p><p>L-Elf opened his eyes. No, he wasn't alone in the room. Tokishima Haruto didn't leave; in fact, he was standing next to the closed door. L-Elf could see his silhouette in the dark. He also carried something, but the boy couldn't tell what it was.</p><p>“What are you doing, ” he spoke flatly. “Leave.”</p><p>Tokishima Haruto hesitated a moment, then started to approach. His footsteps were quiet, as if he didn't want to interrupt something, except he already did.</p><p>Once Tokishima Haruto stopped, he did something totally inexplicable: he lay down on the floor next to L-Elf and then covered them both with a massive, soft blanket. L-Elf's eyes narrowed in confusion and irritation, then he sighed with apathy. He did not have the energy to be his usual icy self.</p><p>“...What's the meaning of this?” he asked distant and emotionless, touching the fabric of the blanket between his fingers.</p><p>“It's to keep us warm,” replied Tokishima Haruto, his voice calm and honest, almost sweet. <em>Us</em>, noticed L-Elf. So he was planning to stay. “I didn't ask for it. And why are <em>you</em> here?” he said coldly.</p><p>“I… needed to rest a bit.”</p><p>“Then go to your quarters.”</p><p>“Nobody will search for me here…” the other said, traces of guilt in his tone.</p><p>L-Elf shot him a short glance. “So you're hiding. You realized that there isn't any hope left for you all, but you don't want the others to see that their leader gave up.”</p><p>“It's not like that!” Tokishima Haruto fiercely responded. “And…” His voice faltered. “I'm not a leader.”</p><p>L-Elf closed his eyes. He was starting to have a headache. “Whatever. Go somewhere else. I don't want your presence.”</p><p><em>Leave me alone in the shadows</em>.</p><p>“Sorry, but I will not.”</p><p>L-Elf sighed internally, but didn't respond. He didn't need to. After all, now he was dead. And the dead did not speak.</p><p><em>Ignore him. Soon or later he will leave</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Haruto didn't know exactly what he was doing, why he had the urgency to go to L-Elf, to lay next to him in that dark room full of despair. Maybe he was tired of leaving the other boy to himself, to his endless pain and slow self-destruction, or maybe, as selfish as it sounded, he needed a refuge, a place where nobody, for a bit, would have searched for him, for his pretended optimism and his words of courage. Because Haruto was exhausted and his heart was heavy, from the losses –Marie's death– and the recent discoveries.</p><p>His father…was the Valvraves' creator, a delirious and narcissistic man who had used him as a guinea pig, who had started the curse, who was ready to sacrifice innocent humans in the name of what he called the “superior race”. He was everything that Haruto despised. L-Elf wasn't so far from the truth, after all. He was hiding. From the others, from the horrors of the war, from the cruel reality. Just for a bit. He was so tired, on the verge of shattering in pieces. But he couldn't break, not yet, not until the end of the war. So, he needed to rest, to recollect himself, to sink a little in the shadows and in his pain before starting to fight again in perfect shape. He was so selfish, weak and pathetic, he knew that. His friends were suffering more than him.</p><p>Haruto looked towards L-Elf with a painful expression. The boy next to him had recently lost the woman he cherished. His heart, icy on the outside, but warm and caring on the inside, was broken. Now L-Elf was sinking in deep sorrow, without a purpose, without hope. Without a reason to live. Haruto wanted to say something, to help the other…But what could he do in a moment like this? What could he offer?</p><p>“She had…a beautiful heart,” he heard himself murmur. “She was brave and caring. I never met someone like her in my entire life.”</p><p>He didn't mention the fact that she was of another race. L-Elf didn't need to know that yet. Not in that moment.</p><p>“You didn't know her,” L-Elf tone was cold and distant.</p><p>“No,” admitted Haruto. “But the few instants I spent with her were enough to prove to me that she had an angelic soul. She sacrificed herself to save us. She–”</p><p>“Don't talk about Lieselotte. <em>Don't talk at all,</em>” L-Elf cutted him with a venomous hiss full of anger and pain. “I don't need your pity or your words. I don't need you.”</p><p>Haruto shut his mouth, while a sharp pang gripped his heart. He turned on one side, his back to L-Elf, and squeezed his eyes close while trying to bear his sorrow and his sense of helplessness. He was really useless.</p><p> </p><p>Time passed. L-Elf was still observing shadows dance around other shadows with empty eyes. Tokishima Haruto hadn't spoken again, nor had he moved. Probably, he fell asleep. L-Elf didn't understand why the boy was still there. He had expected him to leave after his harsh words, instead he had stayed. After all they've been through, L-Elf still couldn't grasp how Tokishima Haruto's mind worked.</p><p>Suddenly, he heard the blanket shift a little. Tokishima Haruto was moving in his sleep. His breath was unsteady and from his lips fell suffocated whimpers. L-Elf narrowed his eyebrows slightly. What was happening? He gazed at the other boy, whose silhouette was now trembling in convulsed spasms, and realized that he was having a nightmare. His hand moved on its own and rested on Tokishima Haruto's shoulder, then he shaked him.</p><p>“Tokishima Haruto, wake up” he ordered with a firm voice. The other didn't hear him. He was sobbing, and his cries sounded painful and scared. “Tokishima Haruto,” L-Elf raised his tone. “Tokishima Haruto!”</p><p>The boy finally woke up with a gasp.</p><p> </p><p>Haruto’s heart was pounding furiously in his chest. He felt his face and his eyes wet from the tears, and his breath was unsteady. A rush of panic and horror runned through his veins. He...he had dreamed about losing all of his memories during a violent fight, while, in front of his eyes, L-Elf let himself be killed to follow Lieselotte in death. In the dream, Haruto screamed, seeing a rain of bullets hit L-Elf's body, while, at the same time, a part of his brain began to wonder who was that boy with silver-white hair who was dying.</p><p>“...Tokishima Haruto?”</p><p>The boy glanced at his side and saw a figure next to him in the dark of the room. L-Elf was there, and his voice, under his usual coldness and apathy, soundend slightly concerned. Without thinking, overwhelmed by a storm of different emotions all at once, Haruto buried his face in the other’s chest and pressed his cheek against his jacket, while his fingers clenched at the fabric with desperation.</p><p>L-Elf jolted.</p><p>“I–I know it’s hard. You want to scream and hit everything until it breaks and to kill and to die and to do nothing at the same time. It feels like falling in a dark abyss, and while you are at the bottom of it you think that nothing matters anymore. You think ‘why couldn’t I save her? It’s my fault. If I did more, she would be here’. And then you also think that being alive is a waste of time and that you should rather die, than to feel all of this excruciating pain and...and this void. But–life still matters. Trust me. After some time, you’ll find again the beauty and the sense in existence. And the memory of her will accompany you, and she will be happy, because she’ll see you moving forward. Cry, scream, but don’t let yourself die like this! I’m...I’m here for you! I know I’m useless most of the time and that I don’t count much, but you can rely on me! Please, please, don’t shut me out, let me...let me carry part of your pain–”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What–</em>
</p><p>L-Elf was stunned by Tokishima Haruto's stream of agitated words. He was sobbing and trembling and seemed to be on the verge of breaking in pieces. Did he have perhaps a nightmare about L-Elf dying? That would explain the sudden outburst regarding death. His chest tightened in pain at seeing the boy so devastated, but at the same time an ancient and unsettling warm feeling spreaded lightly in his heart. Tokishima Haruto…cared a lot about him, if he was so scared of the thought of his death. And not because L-Elf was useful to him, but because he considered him important….irreplaceable, maybe.</p><p>Tokishima Haruto's words sinked, and L-Elf suddenly felt his eyes cloud with tears and an icy block of pain melting away. <em>Cry for her</em>, a voice whispered in his ear.</p><p>L-Elf hugged Tokishima Haruto, while he began to cry silently. The boy in his arms was warm and his body felt nice and comforting against his. It was new to associate Tokishima Haruto's proximity to softness and not to the sharp pain of his fangs on the skin of his neck. It also felt nice being able to cry, finally, and being overwhelmed by emotions, not by a sense of void and apathy worse than desperation.</p><p>“You are not useless…” L-Elf mumbled. “And I will not die.”</p><p>He didn't know if he believed it himself, or if he was just trying to reassure the other. He could tell that Tokishima Haruto was haunted by something, not only by his nightmares, that he was suffering too, but L-Elf didn't know what to say or how to act. He wasn't used to hugs and feelings, or to affection in general; this thing they were sharing was already something out of the ordinary for him, something foreign. He still couldn't believe he was embracing the same young man who, months ago, he had stabbed and shot to temporary death.</p><p> </p><p>Haruto sighed in relief, abandoning himself in L-Elf's embrace and squeezing in turn. He knew that the other now was crying too, with the solemnity which characterized him. It was much better that way.</p><p>Haruto made them both lie down under the blanket, without interrupting the warm hug, their first. There was a moment of silence, then L-Elf spoke, his voice low and a little rough.</p><p>“...Thank you.”</p><p>Haruto smiled with affection, his face buried in L-Elf's hair, while the other caressed lighty his back.</p><p> </p><p>They stayed like that a long time, in each other's arms, until Tokishima Haruto gently shifted away and sat up.</p><p>“I…need to go. They need me out there, and the others are probably wondering where I am.”</p><p><em> Don't leave</em>, L-Elf thought, already missing the warm embrace, but he remained silent. He always wanted Tokishima Haruto to be in perfect shape on the front line, to be the tool which could lead him to victory. Now, he just wanted him to lay down again with him, under the soft blanket, their shared, secret space. Tokishima Haruto was tired; he needed to rest, but he couldn't, because he had responsibilities. From his part, L-Elf had thrown out of the window his. Now that Lieselotte was dead, he didn't want to do anything. But…could he really leave Tokishima Haruto definitely alone?</p><p>L-Elf tried to get up, but without success. No, he couldn't emerge from the shadows, not yet. But he had seen a sparkle of light. It was a start. Maybe, soon or later, he would be able to emerge from the abyss. Just…not now. He needed more time.</p><p>Tokishima Haruto, near the open door, looked from his shoulder toward L-Elf. The white light from the corridor illuminated him, making him dazzling. L-Elf hated how out of reach he was now and how cold he felt, despite being under a blanket.</p><p>“L-Elf…” Tokishima Haruto smiled a little with fondness, blue eyes soft and melancholy. “I'll return again.”</p><p>He had hoped to hear those words, which bothered him before, but which he now considered his only lifeline.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p><em>I'll wait for you. Meanwhile…wait for me.</em> L-Elf may have lost his reason for living, but he had no intention of abandoning Tokishima Haruto. When the other boy left, L-Elf embraced himself. He already missed the warm presence, but now he didn't want to think about the implications of that. He closed his eyes, lulling himself into the memory of Lieselotte and the remaining warmth of Haruto.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hey ya! This is my first work posted on ao3.<br/>What can I say, I love angst and hurt/comfort (♥ω♥*)<br/>English isn't my first language, so I hope I haven't messed up afjskj. I'm not sure when Chapter 2 will arrive. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 2 months (◕‿◕✿)</p><p>See ya ♥</p></blockquote></div></div>
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